A long time ago, the company I worked for sent me to a couple of seminars on direct mail marketing. One important thing I learned is how marketing companies obtain phone numbers and emails and sell them to other companies, some of which might be some of these scammers.
The most important personal thing I learned from those seminars was the following:
1) Never, ever fill out one of those cards after attending a seminar in anything. The cards are meant for exhibitors to send you info your request, but since you freely gave them your address, job title, name of company, phone number, etc. they can categorize you and sell your info to other companies FOREVER!!
2) Ditto for filling out cards at conferences or even local county fairs to win a free whatever. This also applies to magazines. The company giving away the free stuff will sell your information to a bunch of other companies, some of which will not be ethical.
3) Also, know that grocery stores who get you to fill out those loyalty cards, track your purchases, and sell your info to marketing companies just as they do in the examples above. So if you buy a lot of diapers or baby stuff, you are likely to get inundated with mail and even phone calls from companies trying to sell you baby stuff.
I will only fill out grocery loyalty cards with incorrect information, including a fake name, phone number, address. etc. And I really much prefer to shop at places that DO NOT charge you more if you do not have such a card!!
